New Media, Crime Engineering and the Cost of Technological Innovation in the e-Environment

Scientifically, nations of the world are benefiting and will continue to appropriate the opportunities that computer cum Internet revolution offer; since this had occasioned the flatness in access to both information and products that seemed hitherto impossible. However, despite the advantages attributable to technological breakthroughs in the field of science, the global community is yet to recover from the manifest functions closely knitted with major unfolding scenario and part of which is located in e-crime and other deviant behaviors affecting e-relationship. Consequently, this paper attempts the evaluation of the negative impact of the Internet technology from the context of crime mostly emanating from the young people. It also establishes a linkage between scientific and crimogenic breakthroughs in the global community and finally presents an advocacy for a more safe science that is capable of minimizing and monitoring the effect of its uses.


Introduction
The late or Post-modern landscape is defined by an array of new media technologies capable of both facilitating and constraining communication, interaction, mobility and the creation and realization of fluid identities [1]. Basically, the increasing nature of mass involvement in the use of new media technologies has been well accentuated in many research efforts. Professor Robert Paper for instance found from a study that, for his research subjects, over twothird of their observed day involve media use, 30% of this use involved the simultaneous attention to two or more media and he reported that media involvement was the number one life activity in term of time expended. Exploring this from the context of Western societies, Brown [2] earlier disclosed that every aspect of social life is filtered through the media experience. Ideally, the media technologies vary in their configuration and effect on socio-economic interaction globally; it is mostly true that their flexibility, affordability and transmittable attributes determine to a large extent the rapidity of use. Equally important is the nature and purposes into which such technologies are put into use. Two of the media technologies which have commanded a wide application cross culturally involve the mobile phone [3] and the Internet. However, the most central to this discourse involves the latter whose impacts have generated eulogies and criticisms. In effect, for the research community to understand the nature and impact of on-line action in today world, one must need undertake the appraisal of the Internet technology facilitating social interaction in the recent times. In addition to this, efforts should also be geared towards knowing how sundry actions enacted via the use of technology are capable of altering or causing setbacks in the existing networked relationships. What consequence does an action of a fraudster, or cyber predators for instances have for others in the web of technological relationship? Or what impact does the action of rapists have for innocent online users who are under aged girls? The answers to these questions remain central to the overall import of this paper. Media are ubiquitous and our world can be characterized by an increase in medicalization [4]. As English rightly puts it, the world is operating within the ecosystems of technologies [5]. Popular discourse in the framed new media technologies, chiefly as possessing new and amazing qualities [6]. These qualities that are fundamentally novel has brought accelerated change to diverse area of human interaction globally [7]. The cumulative effect of the change has equally promoted astronomical growth in every sphere of both local and transnational developments. The life wire of today media industry therefore remains the Internet or the domain of World Wide Web. Several researches have eulogized the contributions of the Internet related media while capturing the recently attained large scale global socio-economic progress and its future potentials that are likely to impact many people across cultures in no distant time. In their reflections on the benefits of the Internet, Marsh et al. [8] inform that the educational, financial and social benefits of the Internet cannot be underestimated yet its proliferation has also raised concerns about its potentials for criminal opportunities. Greer throws more light by further explaining that the rapid spread of digital, computerized and networked information and communication technologies (ICT"s) especially the Internet has opened up virtual world with their own norms, values and codes of practice. Just as the medium promoted progress, it also introduced acute estrangement through anti-social/ deviant behavioral proliferation. There is a consistent repackaging of all existing known form of criminality. For instance, as a form of departure from the known conventional criminal identity, modern media technology criminals are faceless and are capable of entering their victim's personal space; possess ability to exercise a shock intrusion into their privacy and with quantifiable challenges of detection. All these novel ideas in crime and deviant behaviours are not without their quantifiable losses to those often made vulnerable by this development. Marsh et al. [8] concurred that the cost and the extent of Internet driven crimes, in human and economic term is enormous and growing. This trend can be likened to Criminal's inclinations to make decisions which are often at variance with the conventional uses of today information technologies especially when examined from the analysis of Reeves et al. [9]. The existence of media technologies equally presupposes diverse responses by Internet beneficiaries and part of which, crime is one. Consequent to this, the current paper examines the trendy of new media technological modulated crimes with the view of arresting the tide.

New Media and its Defining Attributes
It is vividly clear that the new age of personalized mass media has arrived [10]. It is rampaging in its effect and facilitating all manner of social relationship. As a result of its uniqueness and utility potential, Livingstone [11] asserts that the communication environment is diversifying, specializing, globalizing and becoming more interactive. These attributes is a pointer to the functions that the new media perform in the global environment. The function of media was earlier presented in the scholarly writing of [12], these include surveillance and reporting event; interpretation of the meaning of event and socialization of individuals into their cultural setting the most popular and impactful of the mass media in recent times is often classified under the new media social and academic discourse. Popular discourse in the 1990s framed new media chiefly as possessing new and amazing qualities. They dramatically altered the way we think, live, love, work, learn, and play. Hypertext, virtual reality, and cyberspace were the predominant buzzwords. However, this optimistic assertion soon ignored the negative effects of the virtual world [13]. What is new media in the context this discourse? Akoumianakis [14] was apt to consider new media in the realm of its social impact: He defines social media as a variety of technologies such as e-mail, instant messaging, web conference systems, blog, multi-media, etc. Similarly, the new media is defined by Boomen et al. [6] as consisting of computers, e-mail, the Internet, mobile phones, digital photo album, and computer games which have become part of human lives. The new media was further classified as a new frontier of civilization breeding virtual communities, new democracy and new economy. Reference to new media technologies is more often than not directed at the Internet medium. The Internet constitutes one of the several social media. Its origin falls within the second media age categorization with the distinctive features of being mainly interactive and carrying a unique trend, movement and modality of social integration. Its uniqueness lies in the transition which clearly marks out the first media age from the second media age. Distinctively, there is a movement from the centralized (less interaction with optimum broadcast) to decentralized (mainly for interaction with less broadcast) mode of communication. It is less mediated, offers much greater interaction simultaneously and permits a two-way form of communication between users. There exists a promotional disembodied interactive relationship which is remarkably a bidirectional mode different from the embodied arrangement that existed before the Internet. Poster [15] succinctly considers these unique trends as capable of fostering the sense of association among the interacting people where computer communication claims the intense interest of countless thousands of users in the global community. Although, while not compromising the other components of new media technologies such as telephone, fax machine answering machines, voice-mail services, pagers, fixed and mobile computers, Facebook, Hotmail, Photo bucket, MySpace etc. major emphasis in this section will only be limited to the examination of the Internet as a formidable force in the social media family. Mediation in this context also connotes media use, especially how people interconnect with technology such as the Internet in structuring their everyday lives.

Media Revolution and Crimogenic Activities in Modern Society
In the world of science, technological innovations abound. Although, these innovations are important to the continued existence of beings but such innovations nevertheless pose substantial threat to group relationship across ages. Several experiences in the computer age also attested to this known trend. Utilizing any form of media therefore rests solely on the advantage it confers on the users. The Internet for instance, tremendously promote the free flow of information on a massive scale, shrinking space and entrenching diverse embeddedness in the global community. Explaining the advantages of the new media, Berry et al. [16] observe that the technology help to reconfigure the taken-for-granted environmental boundaries between the public and private, and the global and the local, thus, as it were making interactions via electronic technologies possible in many places at the same time. Contextualizing this function, media technologies serve as medium for constructing a sense of imaginary transport, mediating cultural contact and the promotion of transnational communalism. Robin et al. [17] rightly pointed out that the Internet media permits oscillation between two places thereby enabling users to operate in a geographical space other than their own. Ideally, this singular advantage presents cyber criminals the opportunity to operate undetected and utilize their profiting from such crimes unchallenged. With a sense of optimism, few scholars viewed the birth of the Internet as firmly grounded in altruistic adventure and many agreed that its impact has been rewarding (Castells [18] Cairncross [19] Naughton [20] while to sizeable others, its contributions has devalued individuals and made states worse-off especially for those in the third word [21], Dibbell [22] Gelder [23,24]. Considered the arguments supportive of the new global economy as beneficial therefore, Manuel Castells averred that the new Internet driven economy has made most nations better-off thus promoting interdependency and economic growth. The Internet as an appropriate tool for trade networking is further conceived by Castells as that characterized by the dominance of interdependent global financial markets, operated by electronic networks processing information at high speed, handling huge volumes of transactions in a pattern of extraordinary complexity [18]. It symbolizes an economy where core activities of management, production, and distribution of goods and services are equally organized around electronic networks that simultaneously coordinate decision-making and decentralize production and distribution throughout the planet. The Internet has also been viewed as marking a shift from the material to the immaterial capable of generational transformation [25] Similarly, Barr [26] viewed the coming of the Internet, its growth, its global reach and the unabated passion of its adherents coupled with the plethora of unresolved consequences of the advent of the Internet as a paradigm shift. Several other scholars hinge their position on the liberating social possibilities of Internet technology [27]. For instance, expresses the view that the Internet promotes definite social relationships that can be extended in both time and space. Homes [28] assert that the Internet functions to generate new forms of relationships which were not previously possible. These commendations sound too good but skeptically, one may be tempted to ask or query if this is the true state of things affecting the Internet from the stand point of eulogies from these many scholars on the workings of the new media in the cyber world? Going a step further into the realm of the known, one would certainly realize that there are more to the Internet than what the eye can behold [29]. The future of the Internet and its impact on business, government and society remain oblique. In short, Buckingham [30] referred to this eulogy as technological determinism and glorification and to others transcendent in the e-Environment. Social  [31]. Apart from personal reflection, research has equally condemned the superfluous view of the internet as redemptive technology Webster [32] Buckingham [33] simply puts in the words of Howard et al. [34] 'ignoring the Internet is as huge a mistake as seeing it as a savior." Understanding its uses must be accompanied by the knowing of people's non-Internet attributes and behaviours. Despite its embedding qualities, Livingstone [35] posits that the way in which the Internet is becoming embedded in everyday life raises questions about access and inequalities, about nature and quality of use, about the implication for young people…and about balance between the risks and opportunities posed by the Internet for children and their families [35]. Its manifest function inherent in its uses that Livingstone identified involves diverse illicit uses and part of which is cybercrimes. With the emergence of cyber enabled crimes, there are myriad of apprehensive reactions and when exploring the consequences of the newly evolving crimes on global relationship, one should quickly realize that the encroachment of cyber fraud for instance, further promotes the erosion of trust, as few unfolding development in the global economic environment became a major source of concern. Online financial fraud has increased exponentially in the past several years, forming the foundation of a trend that shows no signs of abating [36]. Analyzing further, Graham et al, quantify the cost of cyber fraud and disclosed that the global total of criminal gain from cyber fraud is impossible to estimate precisely, but most indicators suggest it stands in the high tens of billions of dollars, perhaps in the hundreds (P21). Consequently, any scholarly effort intended to evaluate the workings and benefits of the new media must by its nature examine its impact resulting in losses accruing from intergroup interaction crossculturally. Howard [34] argues that much of what we experience in relation to Internet use and misuse basically reflects attributes of the users. The history of technology is full of examples of unanticipated consequences and even subversive uses. Even so, the forms that technology takes are largely shaped by the social actors and social institutions that play a leading role in producing it, and in determining where, when, and how it will be used, and by Buckingham [30]. Internet is a complex landscape consisting of different applications, purposes and users. The Internet in its advent only served as a supportive mechanism as it functioned in the enhancement of hitherto existing components of economic structure and expanded human transactionary behaviour. It complements the efforts and quest for expropriation of benefits of both sane, semi-sane and insane people and makes their core concerns better and efficiently served [37]. It attends to both legitimate and illegitimates ventures. Equipped with the knowledge of the malleability of the Internet therefore, it is expedient for researchers to embark on a reality check on how people adapt the Internet to suit their socio-economic situations. One other area that needed to be addressed is the increasing risks characterizing the electronic-driven economy utilizing the cyber space. Conventional computer security threats impeding the functioning of modern day electronic communication according to Amoroso [38] include those directed at confidentiality (sensitive information leak), integrity (worms affecting the operation of cyber technology), availability (botnet knocking out an important system), and theft (compromised identity of users). The structuration of modern day economy increases the level of vulnerability when compared to those that affected other forms of economies that preceded it. This produces the unprecedented magnitude of risks and creates difficulties in arriving at accurate predictions of outcomes in social interaction bearing economic cost. One of such risks is the one projected by today's e-criminals that is consistently threatening the cyber environment. The Internet has featured widely in the media as the trading post for prostitution and exploitation, for the selling of children, and for the tactics of attack amongst others. It also provides hang-out space for all sorts of people whose deviant 'or criminal proclivities might make it difficult for them to place an ad in the local classified column [3]. Amongst all other challenges that the cyber space may cause 'the world order, one is the proliferation of crime, which lately became manifest, along the course of diverse usages of the Internet in the global economy. The consequences of social transformation for the ordering of human interactions remain crucial to our understanding of global social dynamics. This made the cyber space the domain of every Tom, Dick and Harry. Considering the embeddedness of crime within the structure of modern cyber technology, Graboski [39] opine that many forms of telecommunications-related crime are simply traditional crimes committed with modern tools. Fraud has existed from time immemorial but its growth in sophistication in modern society is facilitated by the existence of the computer powered by the Internet technology and helped in generating cyber fraud. Fraud and related activities aimed at depriving significant others of their resources can be viewed from different angles. The differences that have existed in the field of fraud can be explained only by the methods adapted from one generation to another generation. Technology related fraud and other crimes as pornography, e-stalking, e-bullying etc. present unique characteristic in so far as crime perpetrators are often elusive and the defining nature of such crime creates a dilemma in enforcement. Apart from these noticeable defects, many of the crimes, which take place in the real world, occur in cyberspace. These include cyber-sex: sexual harassment, rape, child abduction, child pornography and laundering. Unfortunately, many cyber crimes are untraceable which makes the whole situation frustrating and promoting disillusionment. In computer related crimes, the category mostly affected are the young people and most studies is expected to focus in this area of research. This is more so as the hope of tomorrow lies with our future generations.

Media Use, Young People and Risk Factors
People derive meaning from past as well as present media sources [40]. The media provide fodder that enable people to validate beliefs, choices, and actions; indulge fantasies; and find empowering (or disturbing) messages. People use media to get information, make social comparisons, garner support, build or enhance image of self, relieve frustrations, chart social courses and formulate life plans. New media provide endless opportunities for users to communicate their ideas, opinion and information to others [41], ideally the media become supportive mechanism for both information requirements and a means of survival for the vast majority of people especially in the global environment Central to the Internet use is the advantage of the medium that was identified by Akoumianakis. He espouses that people go online for variety of purposes such as to chat, to find like-minded people, to debate issues, to play games, to share and seek for information, to find support, to shop, or just to hang-out with others but all is laden with its identifiable risks and definitive cost. Unfortunately, the appraisal of this myriad of cost has received little attention in research. With the exception of few theorists who did the appraisal of the consequences of new media technologies [42,43]. The crimogenic implications of Internet use in the cyber community have received relatively little attention. Obviously, crime of diverse dimension has continued to plague the new media environment due to the nature of dependence of many people on the technology. As a matter fact, in today media society, where the geographic and kinship ties of the parish, local neighbourhood or industrial slum have virtually disappeared, individuals have become very heavily dependent on in the e-Environment. Social media of many kinds to acquire a sense of belonging and attachment to others [25]. This dependency and the attachments are not without risks and relational cost. The evaluation of the emerging risk in the media environment that is particularly linkable to crime is what this paper addresses and specific attention directed at the role of the Internet in crime. The spread of new media technology has facilitated the spread of deviant behaviors that are hitherto unknown in many societies and thus making the risk and cost attached to Internet uses a general concern in the global environment. Traditionally, the initial problems knitted to media technology are what were described as old spells by Boomen [6]. However, modern risks attributable to new media then became the new spells. When creating a link between the two spells therefore, recourse should be made to the foremost approach to the implications of media technology use that can be found in the work of McLuhan. He was quick to identify the double edged implication of modern media technology for human social interaction. In his book, The Gutenberg Galaxy, part of what McLuhan attributed to be the negative impacts of technology include groups, communes, anonymous corporate identities, and a new kind of tribalism, which he sought to convey by his phrase global village. He further expatiated on the loss of identities that is now peculiar to the cyber environment. McLuhan argued that the introduction of any new medium most often than not introduces extension, reversal, retrieval and obsolescence. Discussing the extension of media technology as conceived by McLuhan, this denotes the transformation of existing technologies to more sophisticated forms. Its sophistication increases its effectiveness. However, just as the extension promote positive effect in relational communication, in the context of crime, the techniques of committing crime equally became more complex and difficult to easily comprehend in the environment of virtual relationship. In others relationship such as dating a distant lover, this also become so simple and at a cost relative cheap than the practices that existed in the traditional settings characterized by face to face relationship but this have however promoted dating related rape and fraud.. Economic related interaction also became disembodied and thus promoting apprehension, vulnerability and at times economic loss to media users. The use of cell phones as means of communication has also been fraught with one deceptive use or the other. Apart from these few examined, there are gamuts of relationship that are negatively affected in e-environment by the use of new media technologies. Tomlinson [42] posited that new media technologies are imperfect instruments by which people try to claim some sense of security despite having double edge (positive and negative) consequences. Winston [44] argues that the Internet remained one of the most expensive communication system ever devised; and one whose real costs and purposes seemed to be almost totally hidden from those who use it. Part of the reason why its consequences remain hidden is the massive scholarly eulogy of its advantages at the expense of the appraisal of its negative cost to Internet adherents. The most popular among these adherents involves the young generation who often adapt the technology to foster friendships and solving life socio-economic challenges. Several scholars gave reasons for the affinity between young people and the Internet. Argyle [45] was apt to attribute the continued interest of young people in Internet technology to its ability to foster continuities of social engagement and its potential to facilitate the making of on-line friends. A follow-up observation to this position made by Gauntlet [46] reveals that young people favour on-line relationship due to their attempt at seeking a supplement to off-line interaction which in most cases seems inadequate to them and it is often done to expropriate the benefits derivable from the Internet. This encompasses both licit and illicit benefits. The actualization of disembodied representation is another factor in young Internet use that is specifically reported by Shields and arguing further, Homes posit that the popularity of the Internet as one of the existing communication modes lies in the high level of reciprocity it offers which makes it distinct from other media. This also involves its high speed, possibility of multi data networking and more convincing high fidelity realism to the users. There is the instantaneousness of the reciprocity causing the promotion of acceptance of the Internet as a sure medium of social/group interaction. With its large range of submedia (MUDs, ICQs, email and WWW) and its ability to facilitate complexity, it offers a network medium unparalleled in its potential and scope (Homes, 2005:50). Combining these various positions, it is most glaring that there exists a gap on why young people adopt the Internet. Convincingly, it is a domain where deviant interaction flourishes, a development often ignored in most scholars analysis of young people-Internet interface. Due to their unlimited access to media technologies, it becomes pretty simple for young people to experiment with all manner of behavior and engage in risk laden conducts. The negative outcome of risk-taking behavior impairs not only the current but, even more important, the future status of considerable segments of the population and encompasses all socioeconomic levels [47]. To argue that the Internet in part is a domain of crime is not misplacement. Experience has shown that Internet medium supports fraud and other crime related activism because of the volume of uses and the nature of risks attendant to its configuration and operationality. Explaining why the Internet supports crime, one should rarely know that the availability and accessibility related risk factor is quite important for analysis. First and foremost, it is uncontestable that the availability or proliferation of computers and other new media apparatus encourages the use of these media technologies. People who live in information societies do not only encounter and use 'information and communication technologies; but increasingly, their modes of action are unframed by these technologies. Considering the global economic environment, face to face relationship has gradually paved way for the interface represented in technological terminals of communication. Internet is unequivocally capable of generating embodied relationship among users. Asides, there is nonrestriction to persons of questionable character and to those who have anti-social intentions in the use of the Internet thus making it another fundamental risk factor in Internet use. In scientific research, few scholars have blamed the misuse of cyber technology and the increasing risk regime globally on the unrestricted access to the cyber space. Borrowing the idea of phantasmagoric space from Bauman [48], we may observe that the possibility of divergent access to the cyber space is an important factor occasioning cybercrimes in the international community and invariably implicating the young people. Other risk inducing factors is located in the configuration of the computer technology and particularly the Internet. The permissibility of intrusion into other people's privacy remains the core of risk. This development is made possible by the electronic means of communication which allows the radical intrusion from the realm of the far into the realm of the near. The intrusion into the private realms of others is made possible by what has been described as the domestication of other places where domestic and privates' spaces are increasingly connected and overlap with public space globally [49]. This automatically encourages the exposure of private concerns and occasions the multiplication of risks in interpersonal relations. Analyzing the risk factors further in the Internet use, the Internet environment is devoid of both tangible and non-tangible control mechanisms in relation to its effectiveness policing. Explaining the control related risk factor in Internet use, Loon [4] links the surge in cyber fraud for instance and other forms of on-line criminality to the absence of face-to-face in the e-Environment. Social disembodied interaction which seems to facilitate the mode of deception. He succinctly puts the situation created by the Internet environment this way the Internet has turned the illusionary man in the street 'into an opportunistic criminal or fraudster. The environment denotes the one with the absence of the Leviathan causing lack of surveillance, legal muscle and face-to-face moral entrenchment that had instantiated the loosening of the commitment to the common good, and that which invariably awakened the wolves within Loon [4]. The young people everywhere have unfortunately become part of the wolves within by reason of their socio-economic vulnerability a situation reinforced by their exposure and incessant use of the new media.

New Media and the Future of Young Generation
To a large extent, scholars eulogize how new media technologies construct and transform the meaning of home, community work, nations and citizenship [16]. Research has shown that views on the impact of media technology vary from the clearly positive to the perceptibly negative. At the receiving end of both divide, Livingstone opines that the young people are the most vulnerable and potentially at risk from the danger of inappropriate content and contracts online emanating from exposure to new media technologies. Kehily [50] explains that the vulnerability of young people is tied to reluctance to conform to societal norms thus leading to deviance often incorporating moments of rebellion and/or criminality. While few scholars saw exposure to digital media as threatening and as destroying personality of the young people Cordes et al. [51][52][53][54] others posit that the existence of digital media reflects progress for the next generation [55,56], Bober et al. [57], Facer et al. [58], Holloway [59], Warschauer [60]. Basically, the pessimistic view about the impact of new media on youths is best captured by Akinbode [61]. He argued that young people by virtue of their conventional and nonconventional habits often end up marginalized, excluded, misused and misrepresented. Considering the vulnerability of the young generation, the first set of scholars lamented the gradual replacement of existing moral values with social ills driven behaviors among the young people. Young people are vast learning behaviors that are consistently querying the basis of our collective existence and eroding bulwark of trust underpinning our mutual relationship. The perceived threat affecting media and crime symbiosis in the new age involve the emergence of hitherto unfamiliar crimes such as fraud, pornography, cyber stalking, phishing related activism often made possible by Internet technology and implicating more and more youths in today modern economic environment [62]. The configuration of the media which allows for the retention of individuality fosters the inclination of few young people to engage in deviant behaviours so listed. Advocates of the new digital generation Castell et al. [63][64][65], earlier viewed digital media as force of liberation for young generation a means of cutting away from inhibitive traditions and the harbinger of new autonomous forms of communication and virtual community. Livingstone argues that there appears to be a promising match between the style of deliberation afforded by Jones [66], the Internet and that preferred that population segment of young people. Modern young people are viewed as more open, democratic, creative and innovative than their predecessors. Age has a bearing on media use; while newspaper reading is more unique to older the younger generation favours the use of social media Graber and Dunaway. It is a known fact that young generation is more conversant with today communication technology than the older generation [67]. A different media exposure and use pattern partly explains differences in knowledge and attitudes across ages. Tapscot, for instance, views that the young generation are hungry for expression, discovery, and their own self-development‖: they are savvy, self-reliant, analytical, articulate, creative, and inquisitive, accept diversity, and socially conscious. The Internet for example, offers young people the opportunity of social awakening [68,69], making them more tolerant, more globally oriented, inclined to exercise their civic rights and gives them more potential to appreciate their remote and immediate environment. Recent developments query such optimism. Because the media shape people's knowledge, attitudes and feelings, they obviously can influence behavior. Two area of concern relating to effect of media on behavior discussed by Graber and Dunaway are imitation of violence and crime, particularly among adolescents and stimulation of economic and political development in the underdeveloped regions [70]. The affinity between media, politicoeconomic progress and crime is thus accentuated in the position of Graber and Dunaway. Consequently, with the growing sophistication of media technologies and the expansion of global trade, the future of young generation is further expanded to accommodate both acceptable and unacceptable behaviors explained by Webster [71], they promote values negating the mainstream standards and rusher in incremental risks depending on the pendulum of favorability or otherwise of the social environment.

Conclusion and Recommendation
There are two important factors affecting the new media and especially the Internet as source of communication and livelihood in all known society. The first centers on the legal use by appreciable number of people in the socio-economic community and that which correspondingly generates life support to vast majority of media professionals. The second involves the illicit use by appreciably few who manipulate the Internet media as a means for amassing illicit wealth, anti-social behavior and other vices which invariably constitute risk to social interaction in the global community. The need to mitigate the effect of these maladaptive uses of media technology and to engage the reduction in the cost of vulnerability, informs the current discourse. It is uncontestable that the illicit uses pose a formidable threat to rightful application of most new media mechanisms; and those often implicated in this are most the young people and insignificant others in the web of relationship. The young people are fingered by reason of the level of their representation in the media environment. In this wise, any control introduced to arrest the excesses of this category of people will have a far reaching effect on stamping out cyber related crimes that are knitted to Internet use. The most germane to this precautionary step to curtailing cybercrimes is the requirement for collective recognition of the need to apply censorship to access of anonymous users and misuse by young people. Individuals should be able to establish certainty of who is having access to and coming into their web pages or dropping messages to forestall victimization. Apart from identity verification, it quite important to double checks the advances requiring one's response. There must be input validation, security of one's site, introduction of access control mechanism, judicious account management, the consistent use of firewall and avoidance links to other sites that one has no foreknowledge of. Young people activities online should be routinely checked or monitored through the installation of security on users site. Firewalls to bar unsolicited input can also serve as control and Internet users should also avoid propped up links that may seemed unsecure. The use of permissions to enter individual's websites and logging out of all used websites can also reduce the access to malicious users. The observance of these few rules will likely reduce the illicit activities of young people in the Internet community.